Avoiding the Vietnam Quagmire – Exclusive on ODBMS.ORG

ODBMS.ORG Publishes Exclusively Ted Neward’s Follow on to his Controversial Vietnam War Analogy of Object-Relational Mapping

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 21, 2007 – ODBMS.ORG, a vendor-independent non-profit group of high-profile software experts lead by Prof. Roberto Zicari, today announced that it has published exclusively Ted Neward’s follow on essay discussing solutions to the problems of Object/Relational-Mapping titled “Avoiding the Quagmire“.

This new essay, published today by ODBMS.ORG, is a follow on to Neward’s “The Vietnam of Computer Science” (Link | Download as PDF), which compared the inherent problems of object/relational mapping to the quagmire in the Vietnam war. The initial “Vietnam” essay was first published in 2006 and widely discussed in the industry.

“Avoiding the Quagmire” discusses the impact of choosing to integrate object concepts into the database as opposed to using relational concepts or object/relational mappers. Neward states that while using an object oriented database management system (ODBMS) will not completely eliminate all of the problems described in the intial “Vietnam” essay, it does address some of the more egregious problems. ODBMS thus frequently provide the developer a better chance of avoiding the quagmire and allowing them to focus more clearly on the problem at hand. Neward discusses his solutions using the popular open source database db4o as his reference.

About ODBMS.ORG
ODBMS.ORG (www.odbms.org) is a vendor-independent, not-for-profit educational program on object database technology and the integration between object-oriented programming and databases. Designed by Prof. Roberto Zicari of Frankfurt University, the program’s goal is to promote and further the use of object databases – by offering free resources for students, faculty and researchers at universities and research centers, as well as for JAVA and .NET developers in the commercial and the open source world. Content is provided by a panel of internationally recognized experts, who share research articles and teaching materials with the community via the organization’s Web portal.